PI DAY: 3/14, or 3.14 is now recognized as Pi Day. A kind of fun holiday for math and science minded folk. The photo above was posted by Canadian Space Agency Astronaut David-Saint Jacques from on board the International Space Station. Pi Day just happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday, as well. Pi, as Wikipedia describes it is "a mathematical constant. Originally defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, it now has various equivalent definitions and appears in many formulas in all areas of mathematics and physics. It is approximately equal to 3.14159."
Here's a fun video about pi Today, we took a a hundred-plus forks and plates and a big ol' apple pie (thanks, Costco) to a Pi Day celebration. It was impressive listening to some kids who had memorized Pi to the nth (like dozens and dozens) of decimal point number! It was also impressive looking at the dozens of pie plates, with pumpkin, key lime, apple, marionberry and more up for grabs thanks to donations. Super sweet! UP AND AWAY: Great news from the Soyuz. Today a cosmonauts and two NASA astronauts successfully lifted off from Kazakhstan, destination International Space Station. And thanks to the speedy route that is the norm these days, they've already successfully docked with the ISS! Two of the folk on board, NASA's Nick Hague and Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, were on the mission just a couple of months ago that had a kind of hard fail and rough landing. So glad they were safe and got another shot.
Soyuz MS-12 arrived at the International Space Station at 9:01 p.m. ET, 255 miles just west off the coast of Peru. Image Credit: NASA TV
COLLEGE PREP: We're gearing up 'round here for CJ to start Running Start (a state program where high school juniors and seniors can take college courses for free). One part of that is making sure you can qualify for college, and that involves placement tests. Therefore, today we concentrated on was a practice test pertaining to college math placement. (We found it on the Highline College website.) Let's just say the test was a good reminder that practice is important. It's not that the kids didn't know how to do a lot of the problems, it was just that they hadn't done anything like s few of the test questions in awhile, so some rust needs to be knocked off. And practice can help that, right? For instance, we couldn't remember what the "FOIL" method is for solving an equation. A quick Google reminded us that it's Firsts Outsides Inner, Lasts. This diagram from Wikipedia helps demonstrate the approach.
None of the math was particularly 'hard,' it was just a matter of familiarizing oneself with some terms. (After all, how often in real life do you calculate the area of a circle? Oh, and if you need to it's π*r-squared.
PARTING SHOT: Likely you already know about the dearly-departed Opportunity rover. Its mission on Mars was declared complete on Feb. 13, 2019, after NASA scientists could no longer communicate with the rover (following an historic dust storm on the Red Planet). Right up until 'the end,' Opportunity continued to conduct important science operations. For instance, over the span of 29 days last spring, Opportunity documented a 360-degree panorama from multiple images taken from its final resting spot, Perseverance Valley. The photo is now known as "Opportunity Legacy Pan."
This image is a cropped version of the last 360-degree panorama taken by the Opportunity rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) from May 13 through June 10, 2018. The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU Perseverance Valley is a system of shallow troughs descending eastward on the inner slope of the western rim of Endurance Crater. The valley is about the length of two football fields from the crest of Endeavor's rim to its floor. "This final panorama embodies what made our Opportunity rover such a remarkable mission of exploration and discovery," Opportunity project manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a press release.. "To the right of center you can see the rim of Endeavor Crater rising in the distance. Just to the left of that, rover tracks begin their descent from over the horizon and weave their way down to geologic features that our scientists wanted to examine up close. And to the far right and left are the bottom of Perseverance Valley and the floor of Endeavour crater, pristine and unexplored, waiting for visits from future explorers." In all, Opportunity spent nearly 15 years on the surface of Mars, exploring.
ON THE PROWL: Yesterday, we took advantage of free tickets available through our local library system to visit the Woodland Park Zoo.
We haven't been there to see the animals in ages. (The last time we were at the zoo was for a "Zoo Tunes" concert featuring Adam Ant.)
It was chilly yesterday, in the low 40s, when we were walking around the zoo. We weren't sure how many animals would be 'out' given the weather, but were happily surprised to see a good number up and around. Case in point: We stood and watched the lions for several minutes.
This guy was lumbering slowly around the savanna exhibit.
The lioness was lounging on a large boulder.
Eventually, the male approached her.
He spent several minutes grooming her.
They were a pretty pair, to be sure.
We also enjoyed an aviary full of colorful birds. Talk about a redhead!
The penguin enclosure is always entertaining. This guy was a half second away from jumping in the water.
This is our first visit to the zoo since the elephants were sent away (rather awfully), and some rhinos were brought in.
A pair of squishy hippos were laying in the mud, alongside a ducky friend.
This pair of giraffes seemed keenly interested in me. Annabelle speculated it was because I was wearing khaki green, and perhaps they thought I was a zoo keeper.
We watched warthogs from on high.
This beautiful jaguar paced his enclosure.
He did the exact same thing last time we saw him. I wonder how much of the day he spends doing that.
I'm always sad when I see the apes at the zoo. It hits too close to home.
One orangutan was walking around the enclosure shrouded in burlap sacks!
Somehow, she got her hands on a paper cup. She proceeded to eat it while we watched. Afterward, she draped herself in the burlap again. She looked just like a human putting a shawl on. It was a strange sight to see.
The male silverback gorilla didn't seem too pleased yesterday. Right when we walked up to his enclosure, he jumped toward the crowd and gestured in an aggressive way. Kind of a 'get off my lawn' message, it seemed.
While we were there, a zoo keeper started throwing food (carrots, oranges and sweet potatoes) down to the gorillas. At one point, the gorilla closest to the wall threw food back at her!
The largest gorilla was such a beautiful, impressive creature.
Truth be told, I'm always a little depressed after visiting the zoo. I know that many of the animals wouldn't be alive if they weren't in the zoo, but it still pains me to see them caged, in effect. The Seattle zoo has nice enclosures, to be sure, but still ...
At the zoo, we were able to 'vote' for the conservation project we were most interested in. We chose saving the gorillas.
Here's what Annabelle had to say about our zoo visit ...
Yesterday, my family used some free tickets from Seattle Public Library to take a trip to the Woodland Park Zoo. We don't usually visit the zoo due to the ticket prices, so this was a welcome treat. The first thing we noticed was that the grounds themselves seemed a bit lackluster, especially in comparison to similar places such as Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, but besides the subpar landscaping the atmosphere was pleasant.
The animals were remarkably active and noisy despite the cold weather, notably including the lions and the zoo's two brand new rhinos (Taj and Glenn). It was interesting to watch the rhinos explore their exhibit, even attempting to eat off the various stumps and logs scattered throughout.
The other exhibits had little activity, most likely due to the time of day and season. The animals we did see only walked around a bit, though ones in heated enclosures (such as birds in the tropical rainforest segment) were obviously in a better mood. Overall, the zoo visit was a good way to get ourselves out of the house in walking, but somewhat disappointing in terms of visuals and animals.
SAVE THE DATE: My social media feeds have been all atwitter with news about an upcoming space walk of historic importance. March 29, will mark the first all-woman space walk ever - and one of the woman walkers is Washington's own Anne McClain, a NASA astronaut. McClain will be working with Christina H. Koch. Also worth noting, the two will be supported on the ground by Canadian Space Agency flight controller Kristen Facciol, who will be at the console at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Koch will be headed to the ISS on March 14 (on board a Soyuz capsule with cosmonaut Cmdr. Alexey Ovchinin, and NASA flight engineer Nick Hague. It will be Koch's first spaceflight. While it's great that the all-woman EVA is finally taking place, one obvious question is, "What took so long? Women have been going to space since Russia sent a female cosmonaut up in 1963. (Unfortunately, the United States didn't follow suit until Sally Ride, in 1983.) But still, that's 30-plus years of international female astronauts. This micro-gravity women's march is long overdue! In other space news, a few days ago, the crew on the ISS welcomed SpaceX's Dragon crew compartment. No live astronauts on board quite yet (that should happen next year), but a manikin, Ripley, was along for the ride, as was this cute little Earth plushie.
Friday morning, the Dragon capsule splashed back down to Earth, looking a little worse for the wear.
Photo: NASA TV
It rather resembles a toasted marshmallow, don't you think? Can't wait to hear the results back from this test mission. If all went well, a manned mission is the next step! FLYING COLORS: Thursday we took our final tests for the Sequences unit of Algebra. Happy to report we all passed.
STEM SESSION: Twice in the last 24 hours, we have had activities involving the always-awesome The Museum of Flight.
Today, from 9 until 1 p.m., CJ and Annabelle participated in a 'home school' event at the museum. The event was comprised of several sessions for which the students could sign up. CJ and Annabelle's three sessions were LEGO Mindstorm, Drones, and Pilot Experience.
CJ can tell you more about it. ...
On 6 March 2019, The Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA hosted Homeschool Day: STEM Exploration, a museum-wide event featuring a number of workshops related to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). The event was open to Museum of Flight Connections members, and featured both ticketed and non-ticketed workshops. My sister and I went to three workshops, all of which were ticketed. They were as follows:
First, Annabelle and I met a group outside of a hidden stairwell, to get upstairs, where the room where the first activity was being held was. The first activity involved what are known as LEGO Mindstorm robots, simple machines that can be programmed by users using a "connectable block" interface. At the table my sister and I were assigned to, the LEGO Mindstorm robot was designed to resemble a hypothetical Mars rover, having to retrieve another robot. We could do three "missions": The first being to move the rover to a ramp, and making it move back, the second being to move the rover to the ramp, catch the other robot, and bring it back to the starting point, and the third being to start at a different starting point, and bring the rover back to said starting point. My sister and I had some difficulty programming the rover to act the way we desired it to, but eventually completed all three missions.
The second activity involved us using drones (relatively small flying machines), and learning how to use them. But before that, we used a simple drone-simulator app on tablets, to help us adjust to flying the real deal. After getting into the "drone area", we were presented with tablets, giving us controls for our drones. The app also came with buttons to make the drones do "tricks", such as back-flipping. Usually, this would result in a crash.
The final activity that my sister and I took part in was The Pilot Experience, an activity divided into two parts. First, the group was split into teams of two people (predictably, my sister and I both ended up in the same team). We were given checklists, shown a decommissioned plane and told to either check (meaning a pass) or cross off (meaning a fail) for various safety checkboxes (example: Is the airway unobstructed?) Noticeably, there were a large number of dangers in the plane as it was, so it was certainly not ready for prime time. After this activity, we were shown a map of part of the State of Washington, and told that we would be flying over a part of that map in a flight simulator.
The "trip there" involved flying a simulation plane from The Museum of Flight's runway to one of Boeing Field's runways. For "the way there", I took control of the wheel, and my sister was the co-pilot. We had to cross over various landmarks (for example: The Space Needle) while making our way from Point A to Point B. After landing, Annabelle and I switched seats, and, strangely, the simulation told us to take a "scenic" detour on our way back to The Museum of Flight. The Pilot Experience was probably the most enjoyable part of that day's workshops.
While the kids were at the museum, I got some work done around campus. It was odd being home alone, that so rarely happens. I did pop over to the museum at 11, to take the kids lunch. They ate in the lobby of the space gallery - a pretty cool lunch spot, if you asked me. They also came home with a backsack and some pretty cool swag!
When I picked them up today, CJ said, "I'm really glad I went." I told them they are also registered for another STEM event at the museum in April, this time a mission to Mars-themed session. They are already looking forward to it. MARVEL-OUS: On Monday evening, as one of the perks of being part of Amelia's Aerospace Club at The Museum of Flight, Annabelle had a chance to attend an advance screening on the latest film in the Marvel franchise of movies.
I dropped her off at the museum a bit after 5. I'll have her tell you about the rest of the event.
promotional photo from Marvel Studios
Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending an exclusive screening of "Captain Marvel," the newest Marvel film. This filming was restricted to press and reserved groups only, and we had to give up our phones at the entrance and keep a ticket to get them back. The movie ended up starting a full 30 minutes late for some reason, though it was preceded by a small reminder that this was an exclusive event and anyone that had snuck a phone in would be removed from the theater and not allowed back inside.
The movie itself was rather good. On the way in, I was talking with my friends about how I was hoping the movie would avoid boxing the titular heroine into overused roles or shoehorned romance plots, which the movie thankfully avoided. The jokes were well-paced and action was easy to follow. It also did a good job of ensuring audience members not well versed in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) could understand some of the more unique concepts without dropping major exposition.
Overall, I had a rather pleasant experience at the theater. Other than the cold bus to and from and some rather large wait times, the movie was good and I had fun meeting and talking with old friends. The movie is out now in theaters, and while some describe it as rather mediocre it does have a few credits scenes longtime Marvel fans will enjoy.
Below is one of the official trailers for the movie from Marvel Studios
HIGHWAY TO HELL: Last Saturday night was interesting for us. Not the normal evening, to be sure. We headed southeast an hour or so, to the tiny metropolis of Enumclaw, Washington, population 11,000 or so. That number swelled by a couple hundred on Saturday night, as a number of out-of-towners made their way to the Chalet Theater to see a rock and roll show. On the bill: Black Box and Hell's Belles. Christian's co-worker is the lead guitarist for Black Box, a '90s cover band, so that was fun. The main attraction was Hell's Belles, an all-female AC/DC cover band. CJ can tell you more about that. ...
Forming in the mid-seventies, AC/DC, an Australian rock band, has become one of the world's most famous bands, releasing fourteen RIAA Platinum-certified albums, among them a double-Diamond album (Back in Black). Since then, a number of tribute bands of varying quality have formed, among them Hell's Belles, an all-female AC/DC tribute band from Seattle, WA. Labeled by AC/DC founder and lead guitarist Angus Young as "The best AC/DC cover band I've ever heard", Hell's Belles has been active since 2000, and since then, has toured the United States, Canada, Singapore, and Japan.
On 2 February 2019, Hell's Belles played a concert at the Chalet, a theater in Enumclaw, WA. I was in attendance, along with my family, having gotten tickets before the show sold out. The Chalet is a somewhat run-down venue, albeit one that is more-or-less suited for a band like Hell's Belles.
From the start of the show, I noticed how much Hell's Belles sound like AC/DC. Granted, they're an AC/DC tribute band, but the sheer closeness of the covers is honestly astounding. For example, Amber Saxon, Hell's Belles (current) singer, sounds so much like Brian Johnson (and, by extension, Bon Scott) that it isn't even funny.
When the band plays over a dozen AC/DC songs in a row, it quickly becomes apparent just how similar most AC/DC hits (if not all of their songs) sound to each other. While this is already common knowledge, it becomes even more apparent when you're listening to them sandwiched between each other.
Nevertheless, Hell's Belles was and is very entertaining, but I wouldn't necessarily make the trip to Enumclaw to see them again.
HARSH HIVE: Today's bee education from PerfectBee involved learning how honey bees reproduce. Fascinating stuff. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the lesson is that nature - and the hive - can seem cruel. However, it's also obvious that drones dying after mating and old queens being smothered is what's best for the bees in the 'big picture.
So there you have it: A successful mating attempt by the drone ends in his death. Another thing we learned today is that the queen determines the sex of all of her offspring. Part of the process is her determining whether or not to fertilize every one of the thousands of eggs she lays (about 2,000 eggs per day in her prime, by the way). If an egg is fertilized, it will become a worker or queen bee. If it's unfertilized, it will become a drone.
Queen bees live up to about 4 years, when all of their stored sperm from their mating flight has been spent. At that point, the colony begins raising a new queen, and the old queen? Well, worker bees smother an aged or defective queen to death, by balling around her so she overheats and dies. Most unpleasant, but necessary for the health of the hive. FIRST STEPS: As recently posted here, CJ was accepted in the Washington Aerospace Scholars program for sophomores. The (online) course opened to students today. He found that two of the first things he needed to do was learn about how to create an APA format annotated bibliography, and how to properly quote works cited. He was pointed in the direction of a couple of YouTube videos, which we watched together, since these are skills Annabelle should have in her tool kit, too. First up is the APA-related video.
CJ also has to work on a math problem about escape velocity (that has to do with how objects overcome the gravitational pull of a celestial body). As help in working toward solving his assigned problem, he watched a video on the topic. It's from the Crash Course kids series.
METAL HEADS: Lots of playing catch up in this blog post. We've been a little busy around these parts. ... Last Tuesday, CJ and Christian attended a 'death metal' concert featuring . (Annabelle and I chose to sit this one out.) CJ can tell you more about the experience.
On an annual basis since 2012, Decibel Magazine (a magazine focused on hard rock and heavy metal music) hosts the Decibel Magazine Tour, a tour which features various death metal (an extreme form of heavy metal music focused on dissonance, deep, growled lyrics, and over-the-top gory lyrics) bands stopping at various stops across North America. For most Decibel Magazine Tours, there are three bands: One major band (usually not from this millennium), and two up-and-coming bands. This year, however, the Decibel Magazine Tour features four bands, in order of performance (at least at our local stop): Blood Incantation, Necrot, Morbid Angel, and Cannibal Corpse.
The Decibel Magazine Tour's Seattle-area stop was at the Showbox Market, in downtown. After being dropped off there with my father, we entered the building to be greeted with a dark, noisy interior. We presented our tickets, and made our way to the left wall of the Showbox.Pretty early on, it became clear that my father and I were outliers in the crowd. Most of the other concertgoers were wearing jean jackets, with patches representing various bands and albums sewn on. It was pretty obvious that for most of the attendees, this was not their first metal concert.Blood Incantation, the first band to play, played for a half-hour, most of which was filled with one, overlong, bizarre song (there may have technically have been different songs, but they mas as well have been one.) The last of the half hour was occupied by what sounded like a dragging, dreary rendition of Slayer's Black Magic.
After Blood Incantation departed, Necrot took the stage, and turned out to be a colossal improvement over Blood Incantation. Necrot, in contrast to the previous band, played songs of a more conventional length, albeit ones that often sounded similar to each other. Necrot's musicianship and songwriting was among the best seen at the show.While Blood Incantation and Necrot only got to play for a half-hour each, the latter two bands got to play for a full hour each. Morbid Angel, the penultimate band, was the oldest at the show, having formed in 1983. While there were certainly songs from their more recent output, Morbid Angel also played several songs only heard on demos from the 1980s, which didn't seem to bother the metalheads in the crowd.
Last, but not least, came Cannibal Corpse, arguably the most popular death metal band in existence (and, to the extent of my knowledge, the only one of the bands at the show to have at least one album on the Billboard 200). Cannibal Corpse's songs were very over-the-top, on a both musical and lyrical level. Lead "singer" George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher would often talk to the audience in humorous ways. For example, in one break between songs, he threw water bottles out to the audience, and promised prizes to those who could catch the bottles. After people in the crowd caught the bottles, Corpsegrinder informed them that he would give them "The most brutal prize of all: Nothing!", with the last word growled in Corpsegrinder's usual fashion. Before the penultimate song on their setlist, Corpsegrinder challenged the metalheads to headbang at an equal or greater speed that he could. Perhaps needless to say, I didn't see anybody beat him.
In short, the concert was very enjoyable, if a bit loud.
TOTE-ALLY: Last Monday afternoon we headed to the
Burien library for a "crafternoon." The project of the day was
crafting a tote bag out of an old t-shirt. Sounded like fun to us, so off we
went.
CJ can tell you more about it. ...
I recently learned
that it is possible to create tote bags using t-shirts in a simple, ten-minute
craft project. I engaged in a t-shirt tote project at the Burien Public Library,
following these steps:
First, I cut the
sleeves off of the shirt, followed by the neckline.
After turning the shirt
inside-out, I can use an object (such as a book) to determine how deep I want
the bag to be by drawing a line where I want the bottom of the bag to be. Then,
I cut slits (about 3/4 to 1 inch apart) from the bottom of the shirt to where I
want the bottom of the bag to be.
This is followed by tying the right-strands
from the slits to the left-strands of the slits to the right, continued all the
way to the opposite side of the shirt. After doing this correctly, I pulled the
strands to be tight, turned the shirt inside-out again, and voila! A tote bag!
A slightly more wordy version of these instructions, with pictures, can be found here.
ABUZZ: We're still working our way through a curriculum about bees from . Some of the things we've learned lately include the fact that there are well over 20,000 known
species of bees, and that number continues to grow as more are discovered. Apinae is a sub-family of bees, containing 5,750 members, including the honey bee.
A new-to-us word is "haplodiploidy," which is a reproductive system where males develop from unfertilized
eggs, referred to as haploid.
We also learned about buzz pollination, which is a special
technique for dislodging pollen from certain types of plants. Bumble bees
are among the few species of bee capable of buzz pollination. Here's a cool video of that process, from the Smithsonian's YouTube channel:
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